Yesterday I launched the first collection in a very large batch of new work; a series of approximately 125 (very) limited edition photo albums and journals I’m calling Post-Marked. I’ve been making these books up for the last few months so they’d be ready to go this fall…and they are finally ready to show off. A new collection of books will be available every two weeks through December on our site. Collection #1 is full of vintage Air Mail stamps and it’s live in the shop now!

Process and materials

I developed a pretty solid stamp obsession earlier this year and wanted to find a great way to showcase each of these tiny gems. Each book in the Post-Marked series is covered in a cotton/linen blend cloth and a vintage postage stamp is inset into the cover. In addition to the Air Mail collection, there will be great US state stamps, natural history specimens, and world travel stamps coming in the next few months. Each collection is available exclusively on our site for 2 weeks, and then they’re gone! There’s a great selection coming and I hope you’ll check back often to see all the new books. I’m very proud of this work and I hope you enjoy it, too.

31 cent 1976 Red, White & Blue Air Mail Accordion Fold Photo Album (5″ x 7″)

Many of the stamps I’ve used on these books are from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s and I’m hoping to get into some of them in detail here, so stay tuned for a few more frequent updates very soon!

A few custom projects – one a birthday celebration book filled with letters to the client’s mother; another an illustrator’s portfolios and slipcases, and invitations for dear friends.

Informal botanical study three to four times a week at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Printing invitations at The Arm

I’ve been printing and designing invitations like a madwoman in between juggling one and sometimes two toddlers. Coming soon: studio space! Around the corner! Seriously!

Beach!

We just returned from a lovely wedding, followed by a luxuriously long week in Martha’s Vineyard. I had a chance to draw a bit and work on some hand lettering ideas that usually fall by the wayside (you’ll see them soon, I promise!).

My sweet dad, moving yet another press for me in Iowa! This one’s a Challenge MP-15 and I can’t wait to see it!

We have another wedding, and friends in town this weekend, then we’re spinning off to Iowa to celebrate my mom’s 60th (60!) birthday and see some of my recently acquired letterpress equipment in the flesh, as well as take some deep breaths under star-filled skies. We’ve been at a distant point on our orbit, and are looking forward to circling back in close to those people with whom it all started.

P.S. Matt’s been documenting our summer much better than I over here!
P.P.S. I’m sending out some fun letterpress snail mail when we get back from Iowa – email me your address if you’d like to receive a little mail!

The burst of warm weather earlier this week (50! In February!) was a desperately needed reminder that spring really will come again and that the feeling of warm air on your face is, indeed, the tonic and near cure-all it’s always been. Similarly satisfying as the feeling of warm air on your face after a long winter is the feeling of completing a substantial project that began as a tiny seed in your mind’s eye.

On that note, I’ve just finished a new collection of three invitation designs and am proud to finally show them off.

Entwined suite, Signature suite, Leaves suite / All photos by Christopher Walker, Gotham Pixel

Each design has a slightly different feel and each takes advantage of the tactile quality of letterpress printing, layering type, images, and color in delicate and elegant ways. There is loads of information about the designs, options, and ordering on our weddings page, and I am always delighted to talk about paper and printing at length, so please be in touch if you have questions.

And – of course – we’ve been up to lots of other things, too! I’ve been cranking out new books using vintage postage stamps and have lots more to come, and we’ve been reading The Metropolitan Museum of Art ABCs, Numbers, Shapes, and Colors till we’re blue in the face, and I just finished reading Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. If you need a little inspiration, it’s a great read, no matter what sort of work you do.

Spring is, indeed, on its way in the next month or two. In the meantime, I think I’ll keep my energy up by drawing, printing, building Charlotte’s vocabulary while we walk all over Brooklyn, poring over design & lettering inspiration, and soaking up just how good we’ve got it.

P.S. If you need a great wrapping-up-winter song, I highly recommend Josh Ritter’s “Snow Is Gone“. It’ll shake you right out of any funk you may be in.

It’s absolutely redundant to say that I love the physical structure of books. If I didn’t love the structure, I wouldn’t be doing this work. That said, I have aspirations of creating books that beautifully and successfully blend text, imagery, and binding. That interest led me to The Fine Press Book Association and I became a member the moment I saw the letterpress printed cover of the Fall 2010 issue of their journal, Parenthesis.

My copy arrived Thursday and I’ve had it in my hands every moment I can since. There are wonderful reviews of fine press editions, as well as articles about process, technique, and about printers and binders and their background and inspiration. There is a wonderful review of Deep Wood Press’s incredible edition of Heart of Darkness and of Carolee Campbell’s edition of Nathaniel Tarn’s collection of poems, The Persephones (Ninja Press), featuring lushly textured leaves of domestic etch shaded with sumi ink layered with salt. Just the photos are breathtaking; I can only imagine the actual poems.

The moral of this little Saturday post: It’s important to keep feelers out for great inspiration all the time.

I’ve had the Anagram Press website in my bookmarks for years and have drooled over Chandler O’Leary’s imaginative, detailed letterpress and book work at length.

Chandler has just added a beautiful new piece to her great “Dead Feminists” series that she creates with Springtide Press. This new “Drill, Baby, Drill” piece is gorgeous, and a portion of the proceeds from its sale will go to Oceana, an organization helping the gulf oil spill.

The text in these pieces is so thoughtfully chosen and the imagery is beautiful. I’d invite you to look through the portfolio of work on her site and enjoy her illustrations and the intelligence that comes through in each piece.

The Harriet Tubman piece? Tugboat Thea? They’re gorgeous, fun, and poignant and appeal to all of my history-lovin’, fascinated-with-feminism, crazy-for-a-good-marriage-of-text-and-imagery tendencies!

Enjoy looking through Chandler’s work. It’s incredibly important to look at other people’s work as you do your own and I find Chandler’s downright inspiring.

I’ll be back with some new things next week, including perfect bound journals and a peek at some new printing projects, as well!

In honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to announce a project that my own mom and I are working on together. I’ve wanted to pair up with my mom on something for a while and the first of what I’m sure will be many projects is in the works!

My mom just completed a series of drawings of spring ephemerals which I am having made in to plates and will be printing as sets of note cards! You can read a little more about her inspiration on her own blog and I will show them off once the plates arrive and I have a chance to do a few test runs.

A few of the drawings – Meadow Rue, Violet, Bleeding Heart

Enjoy the weekend and remember to thank your mom, if you possibly can. My mom makes my life great every single day – and not just by closing every phone call exclaiming, “I love you, Maggie Campbell!”…although that doesn’t hurt!

Enjoy Julia Kasdorf’s beautiful “What I Learned from my Mother”.

Here’s an itsy bitsy sneak peek at the drawing-in-progress for one layer of next year’s calendar. I’m excited about how the ideas are making their way out of my head and on to the page!

And I want to leave you with a little Shaker philosophy to keep us on the right track as we go through our days: “Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.”

New journals, just about ready to go out the door to Campbell Steele Gallery and Tokyo Pen Shop!

I’m drawing up a storm these days, tearing paper for album and journal pages from a big new shipment of paper, am about to order plates for new letterpress projects, and I can’t sew up books fast enough.

I’m also keeping track of lots of fellow printers and stationery mavens on Twitter who will be exhibiting at and attending the National Stationery Show this year. I’m making plans to exhibit next year, so will be attending this year’s show to scope out the setup and get a feel for the event!

Let’s just be clear: I was a major Twitter skeptic until relatively recently, but have come to really enjoy the community that’s out there, and have definitely seen concrete benefits for my biz…can’t complain about that!

Next week, I’m looking forward to sharing photos and details about a couple of collaborative projects in the works…one of which is particularly Mother’s Day appropriate. Don’t forget, Mother’s Day is May 9 – that’s just a week from this Sunday!

Here’s a peek at a drawing that may or may not make it in to a 2011 calendar or some cards or an invite design, plus a couple of shots of inspiration from around the neighborhood.

And here’s a passage that is quoted at the beginning of one of my recent reads, How the Irish Saved Civilization. I’m neither religious nor quite this realistic in practice, but it’s a beautiful statement:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuos, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr

February, July, and September calendar images from the book of Belles Heures / All images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There’s an unbelievably fine level of detail and an unabashedly ornate and sumptuous approach to materials and design in these pages. The border decorations are intricate, careful, and lavish and the text is stunningly calligraphed. The inset miniature paintings (often in the neighborhood of 2″ x 3″ or smaller) are perfection and, while occasionally quotidian scenes, also depict stunningly violent and grotesque images of saints’ trials and martyrdom.

It’s only April, but I’m already on to calendar ideas for 2011. I’m drawing up a storm and I think I’ve got something fun in the works – and it’s definitely inspired by the illumination exhibit.

Image from Brooklyn Museum site / Walton Ford (American, b. 1960). The Far Shores of Scholarship, 2003. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, and ink on paper. Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery

And, last but not least, I’m getting excited to see this Walton Ford show at Paul Kasmin Gallery in the next couple of weeks! There are also some beautiful intaglio etchings on view on the gallery’s site. We saw a fantastic exhibit of his work 3 1/2 years ago at the Brooklyn Museum and ever since then I can’t get enough!